I don't know about the reference you just cited. I've heard that morality is the basis for concentration. When one is immoral one is, in effect, experiencing internal chaos. Life is then like trying to walk around on the deck of a ship being tossed at sea. That is in part whey the Vinaya is important. It gives structure and stability to the mind, and then at that point that stability is used to develop concentration.

But that's not necessarily a Vipassana view on it.

A human being has his limits. And thus, in every conceivable way, with every possible means, he tries to make the teaching enter into his own limits. ChNN

smcj wrote:I don't know about the reference you just cited. I've heard that morality is the basis for concentration. When one is immoral one is, in effect, experiencing internal chaos. Life is then like trying to walk around on the deck of a ship being tossed at sea.

I recall that William James also connected morality with concentration, albeit from a psychological perspective.

"The trouble is to keep the mind upon a train of objects naturally so insipid. To sustain a representation, to think, is, in short, the only moral act, for the impulsive and the obstructed, for sane and lunatics alike. Most maniacs know their thoughts to be crazy, but find them too pressing to be withstood. Compared with them the sane truths are so deadly sober, so cadaverous, that the lunatic cannot bear 'to look them in the face and say, 'Let these alone be my reality !' " William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XXVI(http://www.informationphilosopher.com/s ... ideas.html)

Even though you may have the practices of generosity and so forth, it is called scattered if you are without meditative concentration. Under the influence of scattering, your mind is wounded by the fangs of the afflicting emotions.

A human being has his limits. And thus, in every conceivable way, with every possible means, he tries to make the teaching enter into his own limits. ChNN

This I get to hear here: It is me told to purify own mind, this should give a complete change of behaviour since grasping fades. But I am too busy by checking others their afflictions for their welfare, so I do it later.